So he hummed ‘Nuages’. He’d heard me play it often and he had a good ear. Django’s coffin was made on Maui by Rudy Ka’uhane, a local craftsman. On the lid he lettered:
O winds, winds of Waipio,
In the calabash of Kaleiioku,
Come from the ipu-makani!
O wind, the wind of Hilo,
Come quickly, come with power!
‘This is the kite-flying song of the demigod Maui,’ said Rudy. ‘Now the soul of your son flies like a kite and the string is in your hand.’
When I got to Honolulu my flight home wasn’t due to leave until next morning. In the airport the part of my brain that makes sense of what the eyes see didn’t seem to be working, all the colours weren’t any colour and the shapes wouldn’t stay the same. Hello darkness, I thought, but there wasn’t any proper darkness either. I breathed in the ghosts of long-gone burgers and fries and when I went to the ladies’ the air freshener smelled like Juicy Fruit. I wasn’t hungry but I felt like eating so I had a couple of spring rolls at the Fresh Express cafeteria. There were neon signs in English and Japanese and the spring rolls probably had some flavour but I didn’t know what it was.
I spent the night at the Mini Hotel Sleep/Shower in the airport. It was like a cell for a monk, very quiet and away from everything. The bedsteads were iron, the blankets were thin and grey like prison blankets, the towels were only a little thicker than the toilet paper, but that monk’s cell of a room kept all the bits of me from flying apart. It held me together until the coffin and I were on the plane. Lying in that narrow iron bed I kept thinking that Django would always be a child, he’d never know what it was to have a woman. Because I had to see humpback whales.
I did the necessary paperwork to get the coffin on the plane and eventually Django and I took off for home. I had an aisle seat next to a young German couple. She was about six months’ pregnant, a big sturdy girl like the one in the Schiele painting. He was also large, and both of them had blue eyes and fair hair. He put his hand on her belly and they smiled at each other, then at me. I smiled back and said, ‘Viel Gluck’
‘Sprechen sie Deutsche said the man.
‘No,’ I said, ‘just the odd word.’ I put on my headset and went from one channel to another until I found a male voice with female backing singing:
I’ll be waiting on the far side bank of Jordan,
I’ll be waiting, drawing pictures in the sand,
And when I see you coming I will rise up with a shout,
And come running through the shallow waters, reaching for your hand.
I felt tears rolling down my face and saw the young couple watching me and looking concerned. I tapped the headset and said, ‘The music.’ They nodded and smiled, feeling sorry for me. Their child would probably be a large boy with fair hair and blue eyes. All being well, he’d be almost ten now. I imagined him having a kickabout with his father, could hear the sound of the ball being kicked and their laughter. All being well.
OK, I’m back in the present now. One of the songs we’ll be doing tonight, ‘Birdshit on Your Statue’, was written by Jimmy Wicks soon after we came back from Vienna in 1988:
Up so high you used to be,
used to be, used to be —
Way too high for guys like me,
Used to be, oh used to be
Like a statue far above,
Much too high to ever love
Guys like me, you used to be.
But now I see, yes now I see,
Now I’m noticing that you’
V’got birdshit on your high statue,
What a shame, oh what a shame,
Is it pigeons we should blame?
Birdshit on your statue,
What a shame!
Jimmy’s tune for that song and his slide guitar were very snaky, quite vicious. ‘Did you have a particular statue in mind?’ I asked him.
‘Well, you know,’ he said, ‘if the birdshit fits …’
I just let that lie, I didn’t really want to get into it with him. He’s always wanted to move on me but while he and Tracy were together he couldn’t quite work himself up to it, and now that I’m with Elias he’s having difficulty handling it. He’s been seeing me so much from his point of view that he’s never read my total lack of interest in him other than as a colleague. Come to think of it, did I ever read Sid right and did he read me right? The world is full of emotional dyslexics.
Elias Newman, does he want to be a new man for himself and can he be it? And is he the right new man for me? I really wouldn’t mind not seeing him for a few days.
14 Elias Newman
24 January 2003. The Mobile Mortuary concert didn’t start until eight o’clock, so it was already dark when I boarded the 295. This bus turns off Lillie Road into Fulham Palace Road on the way to the Hammersmith Apollo. It used to be the Hammersmith Odeon and is now the Carling Hammersmith Apollo. In the phone book it’s found under Carling, not Hammersmith. More and more things are under something they didn’t use to be under. Beer are the snows of yesteryear.
Once in Fulham Palace Road the 295 unrolled fewer and fewer English shop fronts and more and more multicultural ones. I know that xenophobia dare not speak its name in intellectual circles but I liked it better when the chippies outnumbered the halal. Proceeding grottywise past Charing Cross Hospital and whatever was opposite we arrived by lamplight at the Hammersmith Whatever. Why was I feeling so … negative? I’m not a negative sort of person.
Even at night the sky was light enough to show the black loom of the Hammersmith Flyover. It was on the right of an inverted triangle of sky, on the left of which stood the other-century red-brick angularity of College Court, complete with a witch’s hat atop its corner.
The forecourt was crowded with an interesting mix of people and a couple of ticket touts whose hyperactivity made them seem ten or more. As this was January, T-shirts were mostly covered by jackets and coats but the bits I saw intrigued me. VE WA was among a group of dangerous-looking men in biker’s leathers. T IN M appeared more than once in a patently middle-class cluster. There were young women and some not so young, all in black and sporting white faces, black lipstick, black eye makeup and long lank hair. There were young men in Transylvanian couture and a variety of gothic quiffs. In all of these categories there were some of a grandparent persuasion and the whole demographic aggregate milled about by lamplight, waiting for the doors to open. There was the usual crowd buzz but nothing very loud.
On the front of the Hammersmith Apollo, topped by quasi-Cecil B. DeMille general-purpose pillars, was a very horizontal marquee that opposed the verticality of College Court and (due to the laws of perspective) the Hammersmith Flyover. MACCABEE ENTERPRISES & D.O.A. RECORDS PRESENT MOBILE MORTUARY, widely said the front.
‘Who the fuck is Maccabee?’ said one of the dangerous-looking men to another.
‘Jews,’ said his colleague.
‘Not Scotch?’ said Dangerous No. I.
‘Maccabee,’ said No. 2, ‘as in four-by-twos.’
‘Not Scotch?’ said No. I.
‘Yids,’ said No. 2. ‘Non-skids.’
‘Fuck,’ said No. I. ‘That’s the fucking last time I vote Labour.’
‘I should fucking hope so,’ said No. 2. ‘Remind me to give you some literature. It’ll open your fucking eyes.’
At length the doors opened and we streamed in past the outer minders to the ticket takers in the lobby. There were several bars, a lot of darkness, two mirror-balls reflecting what light they could, and vendors selling T-shirts blazoned with the soles of two bare feet, with a tag that said MOBILE MORTUARY on the left big toe. Also displayed were miniature body drawers containing individual members of the band, decently shrouded up to the shoulders. There were posters in several designs, CDs and videos. Refreshments were available as well.